Professional B4/After

Why should you choose a truly, proven professional photographer when there are soooooo many “MWAC” lurking around every corner of every town, who are willing and not able to correctly take you, your families or your childs senior portraits? “What does MWAC stand for?”, you may ask….well, it’s an acronym us pro’s have given to those “people” With A Camera, (I’ll leave it up to you guess what the “M” stands for.”) Probably the most obvious to me is when I hear someone say they don’t look good in pictures, I ask them when was the last time you were photographed by a professional? To which they answer, well my senior portraits and those looked good, buttttttttt………. Hummmm…..

According to Kodak only 5% of the population will have their portraits taken after they graduate from high school. They mean as an individual, not counting wedding, family or the like. More and more, I’m hearing that folks are having a MWAC take their childs senior graduation portraits. (Insert sad face here) The camera doesn’t create the image, the person behind the camera does, much like the race car doesn’t win the race, the driver does. To correctly create a portrait, one must know about light and how to use it to flatter a rounder face vs. a narrow face. Use basic composition. When and where to place a subject in the scene to best use the natural available light AND manipulate that natural light to it’s best. How to pose a girl to slim her down vs. a boy to make him look big and strong. How to make the subjects eyes just pop off the paper and take the viewer into the image and keep them there.

But it doesn’t stop there. A professional knows in this world of digital photopraphy that once the image is captured, our work is just beginning. Through the use of the digital tools available to us we can take a great image and make it spectacular! The following is a good example. This image was taken of Jennifer, beautiful girs from Ithaca High School. She was placed in the scene at the proper place to take advantage of the setting and the light was manipulated to light her face and eyes perfectly. The proper exposure was made so that the subject and the environment was in exposure balance. See the before:

Cool image, right? Right, and it is but we don’t stop there. A little side note here, there isn’t one MWAC that could take an image comparable to this on any kind of consistant basis. Once the image is downloaded, the magic begins. We use a ton of digital tools at our disposal to create an awesome end result that not only jumps off the screen but has warmth, softness, depth and color….

I can assure you of one thing, you won’t have your (or your child’s) senior portraits done twice. It’s not like getting your hair cut, you get bad senior portraits there is no “next time!” And you know those bad senior photos that you see posted on Facebook, you know the ones taken by the MWAC and everyone says how awesome, beautiful and amazing they are? Trust me…they’re just being nice!